PM the hard wayhttp://www.junloayza.com
How to be a Product Manager without knowing to codeTue, 25 Apr 2017 13:00:19 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5https://i0.wp.com/www.junloayza.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/new-jun-loayza-avatar-square-1-55ae14a8v1_site_icon.png?fit=32%2C32PM the hard wayhttp://www.junloayza.com
323295994450livingthestartuplifehttps://feedburner.google.comHow to manage a small team using Trellohttp://www.junloayza.com/productivity/manage-a-small-team-using-trello/
http://www.junloayza.com/productivity/manage-a-small-team-using-trello/#commentsTue, 25 Apr 2017 13:00:19 +0000http://www.junloayza.com/?p=3131Continue reading How to manage a small team using Trello]]>This is part 2 of my productivity and time management framework. Read part 1 here.

We have a small, 4-person, part-time, distributed team at Chou Force. Because we never meet in the same physical location, it’s incredibly difficult to stay aligned about company objectives.

I have therefore created a simple, light-weight process that utilizes Trello to set company objectives, align team members, and only requires 1-hour of online meeting time per week.

This is how we do it.

Overview

I know, at first glance, the Trello Board shown above looks incredibly confusing and intimidating. But once you set it up and get into the groove, it’s actually incredibly easy and simple to use.

Here is an overview of how the process works:

Set quarterly objectives (we call them Epics)

Add opportunities (ideas, tasks, etc…)

Prioritize opportunities (we use ICE to prioritize)

30-minute planning meeting at the beginning of the week

30-minute retrospective meeting at the end of the week

Trello Columns

Epics

A big challenge I found with the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology is that you lose context (lose the “why”) for what you’re doing.

We solve this with the Epics Column. At the beginning of each quarter, we meet online to create our quarterly objectives (which we call Epics).

Rules for Epics

Only 1 individual can be responsible for an Epic

An individual can have at most 3 Epics in a quarter

A successful outcome with an Epic must be measurable and meaningful

Wrong: Launch V1 of Octalysis Prime

Right: Launch V1 of Octalysis Prime Post-Island and have at least 50 members reach level 10 in one Core Drive

Epics must be a stretch goal: it should be incredibly difficult to reach 100% success with an Epic. If you do very well, then you should hit 80% of your Epic.

Assign a colored label for each Epic on Trello

Chores: Chores are tasks that must be done, but that may not have a direct impact on a quarterly objective.

For example: “Point the domain for chouforce.com to our Square Space account.” This is something that we need to do, but that may not immediately get us closer to accomplishing our quarterly objectives.

Inbox

All opportunities are added as a Card to the Inbox Column. Any team member can add an opportunity and tag another team member that they feel should lead it.

Rules for the Inbox

All opportunities in an inbox should be tagged with an Epic

All opportunities in an inbox should be tagged with at least 1 member to lead it

Place the Cards in the Prioritized Column in order of priority (a score of 10 is the highest priority).

You can use the following description in a “Template” Card so that your team members know how to prioritize Cards.

**Important**: download the SCRUM Trello Chrome extension for this to work: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scrum-for-trello/jdbcdblgjdpmfninkoogcfpnkjmndgje?hl=en

Use Estimated Points.

**Learn how to prioritize with ICE here**: http://www.junloayza.com/productivity/on-setting-priorities/

—

– Impact:
– Confidence:
– Effort:
– Total:

This week

At the beginning of each week, your team will meet for your planning. Move Cards that you will do this week to the This week Column.

Under discussion

If Cards need to be discussed before you can move forward, then move them to the Under discussion Column.

Doing

When you’re actively working on a Card, move it to the Doing Column.

Blocked

If progress on a Card is blocked, then do the following:

Move the Card to the Blocked Column

Create a new Checklist called “Blocked by”

Add an item to the Checklist that details what needs to be done to unblock the Card

I usually create a new Card for the task of unblocking the blocked Card

Done

When you’re finished with a Card, move it to the Done Column. During your weekly retrospective, you will review your Done Cards and either archive them or move them to the Retrospective Column.

Retrospective

If a Card is important and measurable, then you should do a retrospective for the Card after X number of days.

To remind my team to write the retrospective, I use the Snooze Power Up in Trello.

I usually give a Card 2 – 4 weeks to snooze and then schedule it to reappear in the Retrospective Column so that the responsible team member can write the retrospective.

Process

Before the Planning Meetings

Before our Planning Meeting on Mondays, the team is responsible for adding Cards to the This week Column.

Monday mornings

8:30am: Planning meeting starts

8:30am – 8:40am: we review our Cards in the This week to the Blocked Columns in silence and add our comments to the Cards.

8:40am – 9:00am: each team member addresses the comments on the Cards that belong to them.

Monday – Friday

Get to work!

Before the Retrospective Meetings

Before our Retrospective Meeting, the team is responsible for moving their Cards to the Done Column and for writing their retrospectives on Cards.

Friday end of day

3:00pm: Retrospective meeting begins

3:00pm – 3:10pm: we review our Cards in the Done and Retrospective Columns in silence and add our comments to the Cards.

3:10pm – 3:30pm: each team member addresses the comments on the Cards that belong to them.

This process is the secret to our success to keeping a part-time, fully distributed startup team aligned and on course.

Let me know if you have any questions.

]]>http://www.junloayza.com/productivity/manage-a-small-team-using-trello/feed/33131How to discover what a user needshttp://www.junloayza.com/product/discover-user-needs/
Thu, 20 Apr 2017 13:00:19 +0000http://www.junloayza.com/?p=3125Continue reading How to discover what a user needs]]>If you’d like to ask me questions, @ me on Twitter.

The following question comes from Samantha from the Product School community on Slack:

How do you interact with your actual end users? I believe information as well as emotion always gets diluted when it gets passed on. So if there wasn’t a way for you to actually get on a call with them, what medium would you use to know what your end users actually want?

Hey Samantha, that’s a great question. There’s a quote by Henry Ford that I love:

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

You can’t simply ask what people want–you have to discover what they need.

There are two ways to discover user needs:

Customer interviews (requires speaking with users)

Data analysis (don’t need to speak with users)

Let’s dive into each one separately.

Customer interviews

Much has been written about customer development interviews and most recently how to use interviews to discover the jobs to be done for a user. I feel both methods are worth learning more about.

Here are the customer interview questions I use:

1. What goal did you want to accomplish when you started using X? Have you accomplished your goal?

My goal is to discover the pain that the user is trying to solve.

For example, if I ask, “What goal did you want to accomplish when you started using Slack? Have you accomplished your goal?” a user may respond with, “I hate communicating with my team via email. Slack is a better way for my team to communicate in real time. Kind of. Although my team now exclusively communicates on Slack, it’s quite easy to lose track of threads because sometimes there is so much going on.”

Not only have I discovered what pain the user is trying to solve, but I’ve discovered a new pain: there is so much going on in Slack that it’s easy to get lost and lose track of threads.

2. What did you use before X?

My goal here is to discover what the user believes are competitors. This is important because there’s a difference between what a company views as its competitors and what a user views as alternatives to a product.

For example, Headspace (a meditation app), may view Calm (another meditation app) as its main competitor. However, if I ask a user, “What did you use before Headspace?” a user may respond with, “I used to do a lot of yoga before using Headspace” or “I read fiction books before going to sleep to try and relax.”

With this question I can start ideating possible user needs:

A specific time and space to practice with a group of people

Help with sleeping

This question also helps with pricing a product. If you know that the alternatives to your product is a yoga class, then you can use the price for a yoga membership as an anchor.

3. If X disappeared, what product or service would you use in its place? Why?

Alternative question: if X disappeared, what would you miss the most?

My goal here is to identify what are the use cases that are most valuable to the user.

For example, if I ask, “If Intercom disappeared, what product or service would you use in its place? Why?” a user may answer with, “I would start using another chat service like Olark because I need to be able to chat in real time with my site visitors to build trust.” or “I would use a customer support tool like Zendesk because I need an easy way to handle all of my support tickets.”

I’ve just identified two user needs:

The user needs to build trust with its site visitors so that they buy a product. Live chat is one way to do this, but there are many others ways to build trust.

The user has many support tickets that handling all of them without a software tool would be overwhelming. How can we help the user have less support tickets?

Check out Directly. Instead of building another customer support tool, Directly uses crowdsourcing to solve support tickets.

4. If you had a magic wand, how would you change X?

To be clear, I’m specifically not asking “how would you make it better“. I want to at all times make sure I’m not asking any leading questions–of course a user wants to make things better, but you never know how your questions may lead a user into thinking one way over another.

My goal with this question is to discover what needs the product is not fulfilling for the user.

For example, if I ask, “If you had a magic wand, how would you change Facebook Groups?” a user may respond with, “I would add Gamification so that I can give status and rewards to group members that participate the most. In this way, I can encourage more community and participation.”

5. How would you describe X to a friend?

This last question is probably my favorite. For the marketing team, this question is a great way to understand how to position and message a product so that you communicate the most important value.

For the Product Manager, this question helps identify the use cases that are most valuable to the user.

For example, if I ask, “How would you describe Shazam to a friend?” a user may respond with, “Shazam is a way to instantly get the information from a song whenever you hear it.”

We know that “instantly” is an important keyword, so how can we make Shazam faster?

How can we improve the information that the user receives? Perhaps they want lyrics, upcoming tour dates, or the ability to purchase the song (all of these features are available on the Shazam app I believe).

Data analysis

When you have a site with as many users as Facebook or Instagram, you can rely on data to discover user needs.

For example, if customer support is receiving a ton of tickets about their account being hacked, Instagram may decide to solve this challenge by implementing 2-step authentication.

Or if you have a large sales force, you can rely on sales people to relay information about why they’re losing deals.

For example, if your sales team is consistently losing deals because the product doesn’t have enterprise-level permissions, Gliffy may decide to build a complete administration panel to handle the permission needs of large enterprises.

Or you can rely on analyzing traffic information from analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Mixpanel.

For example, if a significant portion of traffic to your site is coming from browsers that are not set to US-English, then VoiceBunny may decide to localize the site to other languages.

Hope this helps! Let me know what questions you ask during your customer development interviews.

]]>3125I’m removing Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram from my mobile. Will you join me?http://www.junloayza.com/productivity/removing-facebook-twitter-and-instagram/
http://www.junloayza.com/productivity/removing-facebook-twitter-and-instagram/#commentsTue, 18 Apr 2017 14:00:29 +0000http://www.junloayza.com/?p=3116Continue reading I’m removing Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram from my mobile. Will you join me?]]>Over the past 10 years, I have secretly obsessed over time management and productivity. When it comes to work output, I’m usually the team member that can produce the most amount of work with the least amount of time invested — perhaps Stephen Johnson was the only person to ever beat me in productive output.

I’m now in the process of consolidating all of my learnings into a framework that can work for anyone. I’d love to try my framework on you. Will you join me?

Today I will give you step 1 of my framework: Zap the distractions.

Remove distractions

Although I’ve continued to improve my productive output over the years, I realized that recently my head felt quite disrupted and cloudy. It started with the 2016 presidential election and carried over to Q1 2017.

I found myself constantly checking the Washington Post, NPR, Facebook, and Reddit for all of the latest political news. This constant phone-checking then pushed me to check Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, and Instagram more often.

Pretty soon I felt like a teenager constantly checking my feed for how many people have “Liked” my posts.

This had to stop.

Purge

If Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Youtube continued to live on my phone, then I knew there was no way I was ever going to break the bad habit of constantly checking my social channels.

I therefore deleted all of the social media apps on my phone.

I would like you to do the same.

FAQ

What if you need access to social channels for work?

I too use social channels for work. I now consciously choose to access my social channels on my laptop exclusively.

Don’t you miss important updates from friends?

No. I still have all of my messaging apps on my phone. If my friends need me, they know how to find me.

Isn’t deleting your social media accounts quite extreme?

Yes, that is quite extreme, but quite different from what I’m asking you to do. I’m asking you to remove the social media apps from your phone. This will help you in breaking the bad habit of checking your phone every time you feel lonely or bored.

You can still access your social feed on your laptop.

Unsubscribe from everything

I’m going to get you to inbox zero.

Trust me, it feels so great to have a clean inbox:

Haha, looks like I’m at inbox one because I’m saving a coupon code from Oil Can Henry’s.

Getting to inbox zero is a process. We’ll get you there by the end of my framework, but for now, all I want you to do is to unsubscribe from EVERYTHING.

2. Get to a zero inbox every day

3. Prioritize using ICE

As a Product Manager, I am responsible for leading a team to build a product towards a defined objective.

I manage my time using the 70-20-10 rule from Google.

70% of my time

I spend the vast majority of my time working on the following:

Writing requirements

Managing the current sprint

Planning a future sprint

Measuring past initiatives

Unblocking my team members

Managing and aligning my team

A Product Manager usually doesn’t have many direct reports. Instead, a Product Manager has to lead a very diverse team composed of engineers (who report to the Head of Engineering), designers (who report to the Head of Design), product marketers (who report to the Head of Marketing), and data scientists (I think you get the picture).

For this reason, a big part of my responsibilities is to make sure the team is aligned and we know why, how, and what we’re building.

I try to avoid meetings as much as possible, but usually hold several alignment meetings each week to track progress and make sure we’re on track to reach our objectives.

20% of my time

I spend 20% of my time identifying and validating opportunities with customers.

Every two weeks, I present our latest products to customers over a video conference. I also ask specific questions to identify any jobs-to-be-done that the customer has.

I usually invite my UX and Product Marketing team members to join me on these customer interviews.

10% of my time

10% of my time is spent on crazy ideas. It’s difficult to find the time to do this, so I use several tricks to get it done:

I recruit at least 1 person from my team to join me on this crazy experiment. Using CD5 helps to push me to work on crazy projects and it’s always fun working with someone else.

I make sure the person I recruit has a complimentary skill-set. Usually, I work with my UX team member so that we can build and test prototypes using Sketch and Invision.

We present our crazy prototypes during customer interviews.

We present our findings during weekly team demos.

I hope this helps you stay focused and effective as you progress in your PM career.

]]>3108Do you need to know how to code to be a Product Manager?http://www.junloayza.com/product/need-know-code-product-manager/
Thu, 13 Apr 2017 14:00:24 +0000http://www.junloayza.com/?p=3102Continue reading Do you need to know how to code to be a Product Manager?]]>If you’d like to ask me questions, @ me on Twitter.

The following question comes from Vaibhav from the Product School Slack Community:

Did you learn technical skills on your own? Or you do not need those as a Product Manager?

The short answer

Nope, you don’t need to know how to code to be a PM.

I don’t know how to code and I’ve done very well in my career as a Product Manager.

My friend who is the CPO (Chief Product Officer) of Coffee Meets Bagel doesn’t have a technical background. My other friend who was a Product Manager at Flipboard and now a Product Manager at Facebook doesn’t have a technical background.

Instead, focus on the following skills:

Leadership (people management)

Execution (expectation management)

Product design sense

The long answer

Product Managers don’t code; rather, Product Managers are responsible for leading a team to build a product to accomplish an objective.

Let’s break this down into its components.

Leading a team

Teams aren’t composed of robots; they’re composed of people. I know this is obvious, but it’s very important to consciously consider when leading a team.

Leading a team is not as easy as setting a goal and then unleashing a team to get the job done. Every individual on the team has their own unique personality, motivations, interests, and challenges.

The success of the project depends on the ability of the Product Manager to motivate and organize the engineers, designers, marketers, and analysts towards one aligned objective.

Build a product

This is why the majority of Product Managers at software companies have a technical background. You need to be able to communicate with engineers about what product to build. If you know how to code, then you’ll be better able to communicate with engineers.

I got around this by building my own companies and products where I hired and lead engineers. Instead of learning to communicate by learning to code, I learned to communicate by actually leading engineers.

Even the Product Manager position at Stripe doesn’t require a technical background; instead, they suggest:

You are technical enough to ask engineers good questions about architecture and product decisions alike

Accomplish an objective

When it comes to accomplishing objectives, the Product Manager must:

Identify, validate, and prioritize opportunities

Manage expectations

Execute

Each of the above three points can be there own blog post, but I’ll quickly summarize them here:

Identify, validate, and prioritize opportunities:

Can you create a feedback system between your product marketers, sales professionals, and customer support to get feedback from users?

Can you work with your data scientists or conduct user tests to validate the impact of an opportunity?

Can you prioritize a roadmap to balance short-term and long-term value for the company?

Manage expectations: communication is key. The Product Manager sits at the intersection between the company, the users, and the team, so the Product Manager must manage the expectations of each area.

Execution: most software companies currently run agile development teams. It’s useful (and sometimes a prerequisite) to know how to run an agile team to effectively ship products.

If you don’t’ know how to code and you want to be a PM, then don’t go out and spend $17,000 on a coding bootcamp. Instead, focus on the following:

Leading teams (especially engineers)

Ability to execute: instead of spending money on learning to code, hire a freelancer and build your own iOS app

Product design sense: I focused on learning UX and Gamification

Good luck!

]]>3102Product growth analysis of Headspacehttp://www.junloayza.com/product/growth-analysis-of-headspace/
http://www.junloayza.com/product/growth-analysis-of-headspace/#commentsMon, 30 Jan 2017 18:12:29 +0000http://www.junloayza.com/?p=3082Continue reading Product growth analysis of Headspace]]>Today we’ll conduct a product growth analysis of Headspace, a mobile app in the meditation and wellness space. According to Wikipedia, Headspace has over 6 million users (as of 2016).

That’s quite a good number. Let’s see if we can discover ways for Headspace to improve their growth through product-driven efforts.

Note: I will reference the 8 Core Drives throughout this post. You can use the below as a reference guide:

Discovery and On-boarding analysis

The first step for any product growth analysis is to go through the discovery and on-boarding of the app. The Discovery Phase should drive the user to create an account, while the On-boarding Phase sets the tone for the “rules of the game”.

Above are the first three slides a user sees after downloading and opening the Headspace mobile app.

The slides heavily utilize CD2: Development & Accomplishment to motivate a user to create an account:

“made simple”

“in just 10 minutes a day”

These keywords are all extrinsic, White-Hat motivators to drive a user to create an account.

Recommendations: during the Discovery Phase, it’s important to utilize Black-Hat motivators to drive a user to create an account. Headspace currently tells me about how the app will benefit me (CD2); however, I have no sense of urgency to create an account right now.

Here is how Headspace can utilize Black-Hat Core Drives:

CD6: Scarcity & Impatience: “Create an account within the next 10 minutes and receive a special link to try out Headspace Pro free for 30 days”

CD8: Loss & Avoidance + CD5: Social Influence & Relatedness: check out the image below to see how Basecamp uses CD8 + CD5 to drive a user to create an account.

If you’re running around with your hair on fire because of emails, text, and meetings, then Basecamp can help you put out that fire right now.

Headspace could potentially do something similar, showing an image of someone incredibly stressed, and how Headspace can help calm this person.

Above I want to point out 2 UX issues:

On the screen to the left, I tried to sign up with an email that already exists. Instead of prompting me to “try another” email, the system should prompt me to instead log in with that email.

On the screen to the right, there is a bug with the learn more bar. Small issue that can easily be fixed during a Sprint.

Above you’ll see the CTA (calls-to-action) to get a user to sign up for a Headspace subscription.

Challenges with the screen on the left:

There’s too much text. I recommend testing this screen with UserTesting.com or customer development interviews to test if users actually read and comprehend all of the text.

Headspace is using keywords that a new user most likely doesn’t understand: Headspace SOS, Classic, and On-The-Go. A user will most likely ask themselves, “What do all of these mean?”.

There’s no sense of urgency. My hunch is that a lot of users leave this page without clicking “Yes Please” because there is no sense of urgency to purchase a subscription right now.

Recommendations for the screen on the left: A/B testing the copy and icon are key to improving this screen. There are many ways to test and improve this screen; below are just a few ideas:

Give an offer with a countdown timer to increase urgency to subscribe

Show icons of all the packs to make it concrete that the user is getting a great deal

Show a real-time number that increases with all of the people subscribing to Headspace (social proof)

Show friends who have subscribed to Headspace (would require a FB Login)

Challenges with the screen to the right:

Yearly and Forever options to not clearly display how much money you save by going with these options.

Headspace can make the middle option (the Desired Action) more prominent so that the user is compelled to click on it.

Recommendations for the screen on the right:

Add $ amount saved for subscribing to the Yearly or Forever options.

Change the color of the button for the Yearly option to make it a cleared Desired Action and compel the user to click on it.

An invitation mechanism is fantastic for word-of-mouth. Uber, Lyft, and many other apps have utilized invitation mechanisms to increase their K-factor and spread like wildfire.

Here are some ways that Headspace can improve their invitation mechanism and increase their K-factor:

Why should someone invite a buddy to Headspace? Apps like Lyft and Uber give you and your friend a discount for your next ride. Can Headspace offer something similar?

Many users don’t have the email of their friends saved to their address book on their phone; instead, they use Facebook Messenger or apps like WhatsApp and LINE to communicate with their friends. Headspace can give an option to invite their friends utilizing these messenger apps.

Product growth recommendations for Headspace

How to improve social engagement on Headspace

I love the design of Headspace: it’s very cute and whimsical. It immediately reminded me of a very popular app on the iPhone: Two dots.

Two dots does an incredible job at motivating a user to connect via Facebook and then drive engagement through this new social awareness of users and friends. Check out the flow in the screen below.

In the screen to the left, you can see that I have not yet connected on Facebook. You can see the copy compels me to connect: “Think you’re good?”.

As a user, I think I’m good, but this challenge compels me to connect on Facebook so that I can see how I stack up against my friends. In addition, Two dots utilizes CD4 by dangling a +10 bonus points for connecting on Facebook.

In the middle screen, I am immediately rewarded with a leaderboard after I connect via Facebook. I can see that I currently rank in 30th place, which may motivate me to play more so that I can beat my friends.

In the screen to the right, I can see my journey and which of my friends are on the same path. I feel that Headspace can learn a lot from this screen, as Headspace is similarly set up in modules and multi-day journeys.

I feel it would be cool to know that my friend and I recently did an SOS session. It utilizes CD5 to make me feel like we’re in this together.

How to improve the referral program

Uber is of course the master at this referral program. Although Uber is a completely different app, there are principles that can be learned, used, and applied at Headspace.

Clear CTA that compels the user to click “Free Rides”

Clear copy “Want more Uber for less” that tells a user why they should care about this screen

Sets a monetary value on the referral: “Click on this link and earn $15”

Can Headspace encourage users to invite their friends by giving them access to all of the meditation packs free for 30 days?

There are many ways to utilize Octalysis to improve the growth of a product. Let me know if you have any questions or if I can help you analyze the growth of your product.

Scaffolding: the period when a player uses what they learned during on-boarding to achieve as many Win-States as possible

Endgame: the period when a player has done everything at least once and there are no longer unexplored Win-States

In this article, we will analyze the Discovery Phase of Redbooth, a product in a highly competitive market: the project management/team collaboration market.

Starting point for a Discovery analysis

The starting point for any Discovery analysis is at the top of the funnel. At Torre, we always survey our customers and ask them: “How did you learn about us?”.

By asking our customers this open-ended question, we get fantastic, actionable data about how to grow our top-of-the-funnel.

Redbooth hopefully has this data in-house, which is inaccessible to me. However, from my experience, SEO, Paid Search, and content (written or video) tend to be great Discovery channels for SaaS products.

Step 1: Google Keyword Planner analysis

As you can see from the image above, we get in return a list of the relevant keywords for Redbooth, including their average monthly searches, competition, and suggested bid.

Step 2: take the keywords and search them on Google

Now that you have a list of keywords, take them and search them on Google inside of an incognito window.

The project management space is incredibly competitive. Take a look at the screen shots above and you’ll see that everything above the fold is ads. And to top it off, the project management tools that I’m familiar with in the startup world aren’t even competing for these ad spots. I’m referring to JIRA, Asana, Trello, and Basecamp.

Step 3: high-level comparisons through Moz Open Site Explorer

Go to Moz Open Site Explorer and add your site and competitor sites to compare authority and links.

As you can see from the images above, Asana and JIRA are kicking Redbooth’s butt in terms of links and Domain Authority. This is important because the higher your Domain Authority, the more likely you are to show up on the top of Google search results.

Home page Discover analysis

So far, we know that there are a lot of companies competing for Redbooth’s keywords and that Redbooth is behind in terms of Domain Authority against its biggest competitors.

Let’s now take a look at an Octalyais analysis of the Redbooth home page compared to its biggest competitors.

Note: I will reference the 8 Core Drives throughout this post. You can use the below as a reference guide:

Above-the-fold home page analysis

CD2: Redbooth is focused on “getting more done”. This is fairly straight-forward for any project management tool, as the obvious function is to be more productive.

Desired Action: clearly above-the-fold: “Get Started FREE”

CD1: Asana has found an interesting way to utilize a bit of CD1 with the header text: “Move work forward.” It’s as if by using Asana, you’re not just being more productive, but you’re actually part of moving work to the next level.

CD2: Asana focuses on the phrase: “get results”

CD5: Asana focuses on “teams to track their work”. Interestingly, because the focus is on the “teams”, I noticed it on Asana. I just looked up and Redbooth uses “teams” too, but they add it to the end of the phrase, so I didn’t notice it.

Desired Action: the Desired Action to enter my email to “Get Started for FREE” is clear

CD5: there is a strong push for social validation by using the phrase “The #1 software development tool”. Also, by using the phrase “agile teams”, JIRA is segmenting the market and targeting their ideal user: “hey, that’s right, we are an agile team!”

CD7: some slight CD7 here with the play button for the video: as a site visitor, I’m curious to learn through the video.

Desired Action: could be a lot bigger. I almost missed it.

Sub Desired Action: play the video

Can I just say, the Basecamp home page is so cool. It really stands out and I think targets their user base very well: SMBs.

CD5: Basecamp does a great job at being relatable. If you’re their target market, then you look at this image and think, “Yup, that’s exactly how I feel everyday at work.” Also, Basecamp looks like a fun product, so if you pride yourself on being a fun team, then you might think that you’ll like the product.

CD8: Basecamp is the only one of these examples that is utilizing CD8 to create a sense of urgency: if your life at work is on fire, then you need to make the switch now.

Desired Action: I almost completely missed the call to action on the top right. There is an email capture below the fold.

CD5 + CD2: Trello is utilizing CD5 and CD2 with their Heading phrase: “work more collaboratively and get more done.

Desired Action: there is a clear Desired Action to “Sign Up — It’s Free”.

Recommendations for Redbooth

First and foremost, you have to increase that Domain Authority. If you want to depend on the push method and acquire clients through sales, then it’s fine to trail the competition, but if you want to pull customers into your funnel, then it’s important to increase your Domain Authority.

Secondly, once you get visitors on your site, I recommend that you try an array of Core Drives to convert the site visitors.

Right now, you’re only using CD2 to convert users. Try using CD5, CD8, or even CD3 to get site visitors to give you a chance.

The more you can stand out from the competition, the better.

]]>3057Dashboard human-focused redesign of Bluehosthttp://www.junloayza.com/product/dashboard-human-focused-redesign-bluehost/
Mon, 09 Jan 2017 16:18:20 +0000http://www.junloayza.com/?p=3041Continue reading Dashboard human-focused redesign of Bluehost]]>Bluehost has been good to me for the past 10 years. I use them for junloayza.com and many of my other sites because they have absolutely terrific customer support.

However, to be brutally honest, their product is incredibly difficult to use because they lack a human-focused design approach. In particular, their login dashboard is tremendously confusing–I’m completely lost every time I log in.

So, to thank Bluehost for their 10 years of great service to me, I’ve decided to make some suggestions for their login dashboard by taking a human-focused design approach.

The following is my thought process and recommendations for a human-focused redesign.

Note: I will reference the 8 Core Drives throughout this post. You can use the below as a reference guide:

Why the dashboard is poorly designed

Click to enlarge

I’d first like to list the reasons why I believe the Bluehost dashboard is poorly designed:

1. The use of a double navigation menu

Check out the header and you’ll notice the use of a double navigation menu. Bluehost is very robust, which is why they thought it necessary to utilize a double menu; however, the way it’s displayed is very confusing for the following reasons:

Is the sub menu a subset of the top menu? For example, does the sub menu belong under “Hosting”? If I click on “WordPress tools”, will another sub menu appear?

Why are some destinations listed multiple times? For example, “email” is listed in the sub menu, as a section in the body of the page, and as a filter.

Why are menu items all in lower case? (just wondering)

Check out the menus of well-known, robust sites. You’ll notice that none of them utilize a double menu:

2. Lack of a clear Desired Action

When I log into Bluehost, I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to do. There are many options, but there is no clear Desired Action.

Possible solutions:

Have a list of most popular actions

Have a list of suggestions for your websites

Have an easy, 1-click way to purchase a new domain

Suggest new domains to purchase (based on current domains)

Have up-time stats on your domains

3. Filters that don’t look like filters

There are buttons below the “helpful resources” section (why is it lower case?) that are very confusing. Are they buttons, filters, which ones are “on” and which ones are “off”?

Surprisingly, these filters are “on” when the box is white, and “off” when the box it colored blue.

Why have filters if I haven’t even made a search yet?

4. A multi-array of boxes, icons, and colors that are difficult to quickly scan through

The body of the dashboard is incredibly difficult to scan through. Between all of the boxes, icons, and colors, it’s near impossible to find what you’re looking for.

I have to use the [Command + F] find feature in my browser to find the functionality I’m looking for.

Redesign approach

When redesigning a product, it’s important to start with the user motivations.

1. Customer development

To get to the user motivations, you have to start with customer development. For this article I won’t conduct any customer development; instead, I’ll rely on my own intuition and experience with Bluehost.

However, I encourage Bluehost to use the following tools to conduct their customer development:

2. Defining the user motivations through stories

After conducting customer development to understand user motivations, we can define user stories about what a user wants to accomplish in the Dashboard.

As a user, I want to purchase a new domain name, so that I can create a website

As a user, I want to manage my domains, so that I can edit and revise them

As a user, I want to install WordPress on a domain, so that I can use WordPress to customize the site

As a user, I want to edit the CNAME of a domain, so that I can point it to a new destination

As a user, I want to manage email accounts, so that I can receive or forward emails

3. Adding behavioral design to improve engagement and monetization

Bluehost makes money in the following ways:

Hosting

Affiliates

Behavioral design can be implemented in the following ways to improve engagement and monetization:

CD2+CD5+CD6+CD8: Show stats for traffic, up-time, down-time, and comparing these stats with other users in the shared hosting account to up-sell dedicated or managed hosting.

For example: Your sites receive 350% more traffic than other users on your shared hosting account. Your downtime this month was 1.5%, leaving you with X hours of downtime. If you upgrade to a dedicated hosting account, then your downtime will be reduced to .5%. Upgrade within the next 48 hours and receive your first year of dedicated hosting for free.

CD2+CD4+CD5: A referral program that gives hosting credits to you and a friend when they sign up to Bluehost and purchase a domain.

The Bluehost dashboard redesign

I used Sketch to design a rough wireframe of what a possible redesign of the Bluehost dashboard could look like; I used Material Design as the template for the objects in the design.

Here are details about the design recommendations:

Focus on the domains: the domains can clearly be seen on the left-hand sidebar. They are no longer hidden behind a “domains” tab.

Start with the domain, then the feature: in the current Bluehost dashboard, the dashboard starts with the feature: emails, WordPress, redirects, FTP; in contrast, the dashboard I designed starts with the domain: first you select the domain, then you create an email, install WordPress, or add a redirect.

Clear CTA to purchase a new domain: it’s important to make it easy for users to find and purchase a domain directly from the dashboard.

Alerts and Advice are now clearly visible as sub desired actions: a user can dismiss the Alerts or Advice or can take action on them. The Advice can lead to an up-sell.

Simplification of the menu: by making features accessible directly through each domain, we can simplify the Header. Advice and Stats can be great ways to up-sell users. Bluehost excels with their customer support, so placing “Help” prominently at the top is important.

Settings is accessible through my profile at the top right: it’s important not to reinvent the wheel. Users already have a conceptual map for where the settings page on the majority of websites can be accessed.

Next steps

It’s of course important to first conduct customer development, create assumptions, validate the assumptions, implement a redesign, then iterate as quickly as possible.

Bluehost, if you’re interested in some help, let me know.

]]>3041Product Design analysis of Yelphttp://www.junloayza.com/product/octalysis-level-1-analysis-yelp/
Sun, 08 Jan 2017 01:24:48 +0000http://www.junloayza.com/?p=3017Continue reading Product Design analysis of Yelp]]>Octalysis is a Gamification framework. I use it to analyze products or services and to design for human motivation throughout a system (Human-Focused Design). You can learn more about Octalysis here.

You’ll immediately notice the Desired Action: Invite Friends to give and get $5. This Desired Action is wisely utilizing CD4 + CD5 to get me to click.

There are an additional 2 calls to action that are less prominent:

Order Pickup or Delivery: utilizes CD7 by using the word “NEW” to make me curious enough to click

Activity: utilizes CD2 + CD7 by making me want to clean my inbox and getting me curious about what new updates I have

Let’s follow the main Desired Action by clicking on the “Invite Friends” button.

Yelp has created their own referral program (which has proven to work for many companies. Just check out the growth of Uber and Lyft which utilize a very similar tactic).

Idea to improve: after I invite a friend, Yelp could utilize CD2 + CD4 by displaying a list of pending and successful invites. In this way, I am driven by CD2 to complete all my pending invites and driven by CD4 to see how much money I can accumulate: “You have earned $20 so far!”

Check out how Betterment utilizes CD2 + CD4 in their referral program below:

As you can see from the image above, I can see information about the invites I sent:

Funded: invite was successful

Signed Up: invite signed up but did not yet fund their account (I can ping these people as they’re highly likely to complete the Desired Action of funding their account)

Invited: I can easily 1-click resend an invitation to these people

Let’s take a look at the message Yelp uses to encourage WOM invites

Yelp makes it very easy to invite my friends by pre-filling a message to my friends.

Idea to improve: Yelp could use a strong combination of CD5 and Black Hat techniques to improve invite conversions by modifying the copy to: “I just gave you $5 off your first delivery or pickup order on Yelp, good until Friday (1/13). Use it by Friday and I get $5 too.”

CD5: by utilizing CD5, the user feels like “we’re in this together”

Black Hat creates urgency:

CD6: giving a time limit creates a sense of urgency

CD8: people don’t want to lose money they’ve earned

Next let’s click on the “Activity” tab, which is a Sub CTA (sub call to action).

I feel that at the moment, Yelp has an identity crisis: is it a functional app to find the best restaurant right now, or is it a social app to share restaurants, tips, and pictures with friends?

Idea to improve: if a business objective is to improve the social aspects of Yelp, then I feel it’s important to experiment with changing the default home screen to a social feed.

Check out Venmo’s home screen below:

Venmo could have taken an approach similar to Yelp and made the default home screen very function focused: do you want to send or receive money?

But instead, Venmo took a risk and made the home screen a feed of transactions. This utilized CD3 + CD5 in a very clever way:

CD3: I want to write clever descriptions for each transaction

CD5: Wow, so many people are using Venmo. It must be a very useful app

Let’s take a look at my 10 notifications.

Wow, I haven’t checked my friend invites in over a year!

I use Yelp almost on a daily basis, so I’m definitely an active user; however, I’m left wondering: why should I have friends on Yelp?

Idea to improve: check out how much food there is on Instagram:

I have never uploaded a picture of food on Yelp, but I do it all the time on Instagram. Why is that?

CD2: I want to gain more followers and improve my stats

CD3: I want to get feedback for my pictures in the form of “Likes”; I want to show off my picture-taking abilities and where I’ve been around the world

CD4: I want a place to store all of my adventure and travel photos

CD5: my friends are following me on Instagram

I took the above picture at our favorite ice cream shop in Tokyo: Japanese Ice Ouca. If you take a look at the screenshot on the right, you’ll see that I’m not the only one taking these pictures: there have been over a thousand photos posted at the location.

How does this compare to the Yelp page for Japanese Ice Ouca?

Yelp is doing quite well in Japan. Japanese Ice Ouca has 25 reviews and over 100 photos on Yelp. Of course, compared to the 1,000 of photos on Instagram, Yelp could be doing a lot better.

What percentage of all photos, tips, and reviews are made by Yelp Elite?

I assume the 80/20 rule applies here: 20% of the users upload 80% of the content (and I would bet the percentages are more dramatic: 90/10)

There is a big opportunity for Yelp to dramatically increase their pictures and reviews

Let’s end this analysis with the main functionality of Yelp: the search and discovery of restaurants.

The search and discovery functionality is definitely where Yelp shines.

CD2: I feel smart because I can immediately see the important information I need to make a decision about where to eat: is this place good (reviews)?; how far is it?; how expensive is it?

CD7: what new restaurants will I discover today?

Preliminary Octalysis Score

Yelp is definitely a robust app. This post has already hit 1,000+ words and I haven’t even gone into detailed analysis of check-ins, reviews, Yelp Elite, bookmarks, delivery, reservations, or even addressed that Yelp is a place to review and discover all types of businesses, not just restaurants.

With that in mind, it’s important to note that Octalysis Level 1 is meant to be a high-level analysis to quickly see a snapshot of the motivations driving user behavior:

CD1: As a user, I want to help the world discover the best food

How to improve: is there a way for Yelp to tell users: “You have helped 23 people discover delicious food!” In this way, a user really feels like they’re making a positive impact and their contributions make a difference.

Actually, after digging a bit more in the app (this is a very robust app) I discovered a section that gives me stats for “views of your reviews”, “views of your photos”, “views of your profile”. To improve, the wording can be changed to make me feel like I’m making a difference.

CD2:

As a user, I can use Yelp to make wise decisions about where I want to eat

As a user, I can improve my stats

How to improve: my stats are hidden on Yelp. On Instagram, I can get to my stats in 1 click (by clicking on the “profile” icon); in contrast, it takes me 2 clicks to get to my profile on Yelp.

CD3: As a user, I can add my reviews, tips, and pictures to get feedback in the form of comments and likes

CD4: As a user, the more I use Yelp to improve my stats and store my reviews and photos, the more likely I am to continue using Yelp

CD5: As a user, I want to know what my friends recommend

How to improve: I feel CD5 has a lot of room for improvement. Although there are clearly plenty of hardcore Yelp users, there are many casual users that aren’t uploading photos, leaving reviews, or connecting with friends.

CD6: As a user, I want to join the exclusive Yelp Elite community

How to improve: I had to Google “How to become a Yelp Elite” in order to figure out how to do it–there is no easy way on the app to apply or figure out if I qualify. There is an opportunity to utilize CD2 + CD6 to create a feedback mechanism where users see their progress towards becoming a Yelp Elite.

CD7: As a user, I want to discover new places to eat

CD8: I can’t quite Yelp because I would lose all of my photos and reviews

Final conclusions and recommendations for Yelp

First and foremost, Yelp is an incredibly robust app; this can be a double-edged sword:

It’s positive because a user doesn’t have to download a new app to use new features; everything is accessible when it is consolidated within 1 app

It’s negative because it can be difficult to discover new features or the user experience can become convoluted with too many Desired Actions (and too many buried Desired Actions)

Can Yelp take a page out of Facebook and build multiple apps that focus on a specific objective?

“I want to build an educational platform that helps people improve their personal and professional lives through the teachings of Octalysis.” Yu-kai proudly stated. “The business model will be a monthly subscription.”

What follows is a detailed analysis of how I helped Yu-kai build a self-sustaining acquisition and activation engine that will hopefully lead to a very successful educational business.

Results from my work with Yu-kai:

Captured 2,778 emails in 4 months

39.5% email open rate

6.9% click rate

Grew the Facebook Group from 400 members to 1,544 members in 4 months

Let’s start with the proof

Here’s how I did it

1. We leveraged an existing site with a healthy base of organic traffic

Check out the stats for yukaichou.com from June 1, 2016 – September 30, 2016.

Note: we had a slight error with Google Analytics tracking during the last week of September.

As you can see, Yu-kai has a healthy base of traffic. I had to find a way to capture and provide value to this traffic.

2. I created an email course

Email is still the most powerful way to capture leads. Normally, online marketers recommend to offer value in exchange for the email: